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What I mean is the "green bar" or "green text" in the Web browser. I'm no SSL expert (though not a novice either) but I do like seeing that appear when logging into online banking or PayPal. If it didn't come up that way, I'd be immediately suspicious.

I assume they verified that you are in fact a citizen of a first-world country, possibly with an actual company that pays its taxes. That's basically all the trust an average site needs. It's not so much that your website can now be trusted to never do anything nasty, but if it ever does there is someone to hold accountable.

There will of been at minimum checking for address and phone listings for the company (yell or scoot for UK EV's) in addition to the human telephone validation for signer and approver.

Different applications for EV certs will be required to provide certain additional information and all validations must pass CAB guidelines.

We personally use Comodo for our 'cheap' certificates as we get massive buy discounts and GlobalSign for EV as they've have a 2048 bit default root since the start.